Born to Run Read Online Free PDF Page B

because the loner was finding this teamwork thing tough going. But the truth was he had been running on bluster. He
hadn’t found his angle, not yet. All he had was an idea, and a lead. It was a great lead, but only that, so far. He stiffened his back and swung his head around, double-checking that they
were alone. “It’s the truth about Diaz… about her parents.”
    Elia’s face screwed up as if she’d sucked on a lemon and, though it was too late, she grabbed her tuna and mayo sandwich as cover. This guy won’t last, she told herself as she
took a bite. And if he did, well, her backpack was already stuffed with written job offers from FOX and Sports TV, the latter job reporting on her real passion, baseball.
    Here goes nothing, she decided, glancing at her bag for security and swallowing quickly, “Hello-o-o!” Elia knew she was risking her job but, as her dad used to say, if you
don’t make a splash, you don’t get wet. “What more does the world need to know about that doped-out lard-factory George Hicks? Or his wife, what was her name… Annette?
Yeah, Annette… Anyway, she died years ago.”
    What was Mike Mandrake thinking? For a Pulitzer winner, Elia thought he was acting like a pretty big schmuck.
    “Not her diner parents,” he said, his eyes flicking nervously around the floor. “Her real parents.”
    Elia paused, weighing the sandwich on her palm as if it were one of the baseball gloves she sensed she’d be seeing lot more of. What could this guy have up his sleeve? She had to admit
that no one had ever gone very far down the “real folks” track, mainly because it was so long ago, Bolivia was so far away, and frankly it wasn’t likely to be interesting once
told. But then, she paused, what about all that birthist crap about Obama? His Kenyan father, his Indonesian stepfather, and whether he was a Muslim, or had really been born in
Hawaii… All that had all blown up into a huge storm of a story. So why couldn’t this?
    In her head, Elia sped through what the whole world already knew: Isabel was born in Newark to a destitute Bolivian mother, spent her childhood being dragged from trailer park to trailer park
until… yada, yada. What more could Mandrake have?
    “Okay… so why LA? Why are you here?” she asked him, intent on taking it as far as she could. “Last anyone heard about Isabel’s natural mother was in New Mexico
almost three decades ago, right? And her dad? He died in Bolivia before she was born.” She rubbed her chin. If any clues were out there waiting for Mandrake to find them, she thought,
they’d be in East LA. Hispanic central. Not, she smirked to herself, where he was swanking it up in his four-room hotel suite, three heel-clicks off Rodeo Drive where pretty much the only
Latinos were the housemaids.
    Mandrake held her stare. She guessed he was debating with himself whether to bring her into his circle which, from all the hush-hush, she knew was a tight one.
    “Look,” he said eventually but softly. “I’ve tracked down the guy who ran that trailer park she ran away from. He lives here in LA, and I’m meeting him
tomorrow.” He’d have savoured the sight of Elia’s mouth dropping more if she had swallowed all the tuna. “So,” he added, getting to why he’d come to her desk,
“have you dug out her birth certificate for me yet?”
    As Elia kicked her chair back, rolling herself backwards to the printer, Mandrake ticked off the prep he’d done so far: “This guy is the best lead I’ve got. He’s the only
one I could find from her New Mexico days. You wouldn’t believe who I’ve spoken to… folks from Half Moon Bay, early BBB workers, members of her campaign team, kids from her
runaways charity, grown-ups who’ve graduated from it…”
    Elia considered telling him her boyfriend was one of those graduates but, certain he’d ask her to fix him up with Simon for an interview, she kept silent.
    Mandrake went on to explain he’d done all